By: Hollis Hartwell
I want to start this by saying, I have never knowingly lied to you. In my years of writing in my personal blog followed by the years I’ve had here atWe Women, I’ve prided myself on sharing my honest feelings and experiences—for better or worse—as I navigate motherhood. My humanity is what I believe to be the foundation of the connected community we have created. At least that’s what I tell myself when I share my hard truths and some of you share yours in heartfelt emails. We are strangers who have found a common bond in our flaws and the path we are stumbling along.
Because of this precedence and the promise I made to you when I embarked on this seemingly lost season, I had a jarring revelation over the weekend, which I feel is my duty to share with you. I, Hollis Hartwell, might hate the annual Christmas bake sale, and I’m happy I didn’t have to go this year.
If you were sitting next to me, you would be witnessing me covering my face with my hands and hearing my groan of despair at my newfound knowledge of this information.
For nine years I have taken part in the bake sale. I’ve dedicated entire days to baking cookies, many of which lead to recipes I’ve shared with you, as well as an entire night every year sitting at the table with my kids and selling our goods. I have always thoughtI loved this. Thought it was where I thrived. Our table is always perfectly arranged with cellophane-wrapped cookies, a brightly printed gingerbread man–covered tablecloth, and strand of battery-operated lights lining its edge.
I was so sure I loved it right until this very year when it wasn’t required of me to do any of it. In fact, this year’s requirement was for me tonotdo it.
I was devastated about all I was missing until I realized I was relieved.
It couldn’t have always been this way. I know it wasn’t. I made one simple recipe our first years—basic chocolate chip—but somewhere between there and here, I entered into a competition with myself, compelling me to make every cookie bigger, frostier, and fancier than the last. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until this year when my kids told me they hadn’t made cookies with their dad, and we had to make everything last minute. Short on time, we used premade dough. It was the most fun we’ve had baking together in years.
There was no pressure.
No insane ingredients nobody wanted to eat or candy thermometers bobbing in pans on the stove while the mixer mixed the next batch of dough.
We baked in the most basic sense of the word, and it was incredible.
Then, while my kids sat behind the table selling our shortcut cookies in the school gym, I was with my holiday companions for this year, at a brewery serving beer and smiling. I got dressed in clothes a far cry from the Christmas sweater I’d usually wear and spent the evening with a crowd a far cry from the cookie consumers across town where I’d usually be.
I loved it.
I loved getting to skip the event that has unknowingly become more of a source of stress than a celebration. More of awe have to get all this done!instead ofI wish this would never end!
My holiday companions call beer and brats and dog bones in a box tradition, and I’ll admit, I see the appeal. How the ease at which smiles came and went felt freeing and fun and almost too good to be true.
The entire drive home, my thoughts volleyed between wanting to believe the holidays could be so simple and refusing to acknowledge it as even an option. I warred with myself between wanting to be a permanent fixture in that brewery every single year and knowing the seasonally responsible thing to do is to force myself to make the cookies and return to my spot in the gym next year. The gym, no doubt, will forever seem darker and duller than the evening I just experienced.
I don’t like the holiday bake sale, and I have no idea what that means.
Thanksgiving
Hollis
Jay
Potluck at my place tomorrow?
Marv
ghi ghatuvde ptudefdefghimn
Jay
Gross. Hollis, you change your mind?
Hollis
As enticing as your “gross” sounds, I’ll pass.
Jay
What are you doing instead?
Hollis
